From my diary

A bit of a red-letter day today: the interior setup of the Origen book — or Origen of Alexandria: Exegetical works on Ezekiel as I must get used to calling it — is complete. This evening I uploaded the PDF to Lulu.com (which I use to generate proof copies, because Lightning Source do not provide such a facility), and ordered myself a printed and bound copy with a blank cover.

This first proof copy will allow me to check that the PDF actually is right for the printer (well, for a printer), and that the text block doesn’t disappear into the binding and so on.

It’s now the Christmas period, so I don’t suppose this will appear until after Christmas. But once it has, I will generate another proof copy for the translator; two pairs of eyes being better than one. There’s bound to be glitches somewhere, but the typesetter, Simon Hartshorne (whom I found through PeoplePerHour.com), has really done an excellent and painstaking job. He’s also verified the requirements of Lightning Source. Let’s hope that the cold light of print doesn’t reveal too many errors on anybody’s part!

Of course I had no idea how long the book was going to be. Lulu.com will only handle books up to 740 pages. Fortunately the book is 738 pages, without endleaves, so it will just scrape in!

The cover design is finalised, and the templates for the hardback and softback covers will be obtained and completed this week. Simon Hartshorne is doing the cover design as well, and he found a very acceptable pair of cover photographs. It was almost a pity that we couldn’t use both!

I have to admit that Simon has rescued the project, which had languished for a year or two now. The speed and efficiency with which he proceeded through the book — even though I don’t think that he had ever set up an academic book with facing Latin/Greek and English pages — gave everyone an impetus to do the 1% remaining writing. He priced competitively as well.

It’s a big step forward. I’m hoping to have the book on sale by the start of March 2014.